The Emergence of Philosophy as a Problem of Culture Studies

Abstract

This paper deals with the emergence of philosophy as a problem of describing a different culture and an alien culture. In the second section, the author considers the main hypotheses and versions of the origin of philosophy. In the third section, the author addresses such historical and cultural oppositions and methodological terms as presentism and antiquarism, appropriationism and historicism (contextualism), anachronism, cultural imperialism, hypostatization, the problem of terms creativity, etc. In this regard, the author formulates the fundamental problem of describing and studying different and alien cultures. The author shows that the opposition “presentism – authenticism” is more adequate for capturing the described methodological problem. In the fourth section, this problem and ways of solving it are analyzed through distinguishing the language of description of the culture under consideration and the language of its self-description. The author poses the logical and logical-methodological problems of distinguishing between metalanguage and object-language, theoretical and empirical terms are raised. The author makes a distinction between the empirical layer (empirical terms, statements, facts) and the theoretical layer in the language of the subject culture (the language of its self-description) and in the language of description of this culture by an external researcher. In the fifth section, the author analyzes the hypotheses of the emergence of philosophy from the point of view of the methodology devised in the second and third sections.